


Minecraft

by kayura_sanada



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bonding, Broken Friendships, Broken Love, Friendship, M/M, Minecraft, More A Break-Up Story Than A Love Story, No no stay with me here, Not A Fix-It, Post-CACW, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Specifically Through Minecraft, Team Bonding, Tony Doesn't Have to Forgive So Easily, Trouble In Paradise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 00:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10451415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: After CA:CW, the Avengers are merely broken fragments of a team. Until Minecraft happens.





	

Tony hadn’t been on his Minecraft account for almost a year.

He didn’t have many expectations when he logged on; he’d told Friday to go through his old things, and she’d found his Minecraft save. He’d been pathetically big on the idea when it had first come out, then even more as time passed. He’d logged on immediately after every update, had put hours and hours – though the exact count was miles off, as he would often use the game to soothe his mind while he worked on more difficult problems in his lab – into creating his personal paradise. Waterfalls into lush underground caverns, skyscrapers that played around with the very idea of engineering. Vaults made out of diamond.

When Friday opened up the world, however, something had gone horribly wrong.

Back when he’d first played, his concerns had been on the creating aspect, and the added difficulty of surviving long enough to make a proper abode. Later, as he’d gotten more materials, he’d begun taking on the monsters in order to get the greater prizes. He’d built up from where he’d begun, using the landscapes he’d found naturally, digging everything out as best he could. He would spend hours digging – or, well, instructing Jarvis where to dig – instead of using TNT or going into Creative Mode. He loved the challenge, the almost real-world issue of whether to create or to destroy, and how much destruction meant losing the natural beauty the game created.

When he’d played, his mind had been only one what he could build, what he could frame, what he could create. That cavern? It had been one of the first thing, an opening of a cave that had once been a monster’s den. He’d sealed the spawn point with obsidian, then placed stone and ivy around it to hide the ugliness that could no longer touch his world. It had been fun to finally find a way to cordon off the baddies. As if he’d locked them in a permanent jail.

What he perhaps should have invested a little more attention to was the opening screen, and how he’d left his world open to other people.

He would have expected the sudden cropping of new buildings, of which there were more than a few – and more than one were shaped into genitalia. He would have expected to find some things changed – trees switched out with flowers, or small homes on the edges of his caves, or something – but not the destruction of his houses, many outlined in obsidian from bottom to top. And he never would have expected to find most of his things lying in heaps, destroyed.

Was this what people did to others for fun?

Of course, he couldn’t let it stand. Over weeks, he started carving out his place once more. He left the world open, daring these people to come onto the game while he was around. At first, he contented himself with breaking down the genitalia sculptures, and one truly inventive one that had been turned into an actual home. He hollowed out his cavern, rearranging the blocks from memory, since Jarvis wasn’t – wasn’t around anymore to help him.

He kept to his duties, of course. He would be forced to leave the game for days at a time to attend to one of Ross’ whims, or to help Rhodey, or to invent, or to help his company and Pepper. But he found himself spending most of his spare time working on that false world. It soothed him, as it always had, though for different reasons now. He liked having the control, the ability to fight back through creation. Though he got back on once to find the cavern he’d just finished setting up once more turned to rubble, he’d been able to start over.

As Friday was fond of repeatedly telling him, it mirrored his real life crises a little too well.

He’d been playing off and on for about two months, battling against the obsidian plaguing his skyscrapers piece by piece, diamond pickaxe by diamond pickaxe. He’d been off for over two days, having to meet a deadline for SI’s R&D department and showcase himself for a dinner with a potential merger. By the time he’d found the time to devote to the game, he’d wanted to do little more than check and ensure no one had blown anything up during his time away.

To his surprise, he found the building he’d been working on completely clear of obsidian. It had not been done by him.

He grinned.

Whoever it was, this person had tried to undue some of the mess that others had made of his world. Someone gave up their valuable time – and more than a few diamond pickaxes – to help.

He left a sign by the building. It said only, “thanks.”

Then he went to work, his own lethargy suddenly gone.

* * *

The next few weeks were something of a turnaround for Tony. He hadn’t really expected the person who’d helped him to return to his world, yet the next day, he found a sign next to his own saying, “anytime.” It had lifted his spirits even more. He’d worked overtime to find more diamonds, then stashed the pickaxes he made from them away in his storage room, setting up a couple of traps and leaving a riddle for his anonymous friend, telling them which traps were real and which were fake. Others could break the riddle, of course, and get to his things, and the person he’d left them for might not figure it out. But it was the best he could do to replace the person’s efforts while leaving his servers open.

He returned after a long string of meetings with Ross, his chest heavy with the weight of compromise, to find another sign next to his. He smiled walking up to it.

It said, “I’m not your personal labor, Stark.”

Almost, he closed his server.

If nothing else, the sign gave him the information he’d lacked. He didn’t know how or why, but someone had learned his world’s code and that it belonged to him, and had decided to release that information onto the Internet. He found a few of the original posts, now that he knew to look for them. No wonder so many people had put so much effort into destroying his world.

He left a sign in response. “I guess ‘anytime’ must have been a typo, then.”

He could close the server from the rest of humanity. He could even make a brand new world, start all over again. But – and he couldn’t explain this to anyone without sounding half mad – but he always viewed Minecraft as a sort of building block for the real world. A simplified, low-res building block, but a building block, nonetheless. Here, he could create wonders beyond what physics would normally allow. He could battle back the forces that beset his campaign and use the battles themselves to create something better, stronger. He liked the idea of an open world, influenced and changed and created by the hands of many. He liked building for others and not just himself.

He liked Minecraft. Just… not like this.

It came as no surprise to him when he returned to find his diamond pickaxes gone and his buildings untouched. One even had obsidian climbing up from the bottom like some sort of horrible plague.

“Might I give you my usual advice?” Friday asked. If she couldn’t read the sudden tension in his shoulders, she could certainly hear the desolation in his sigh.

“I’m not closing the servers, Friday.” At this point, it almost felt like if he did so, he lost something important.

Even though it was just a game.

It took only four more days for it to get worse. Someone leaked his game to the media. Why the hell the media suddenly decided to care about video games, other than to report on their violence, was completely beyond him. Possibly because anything with his name on it got at least the minimum amount of attention.

In less than a week, he lost all the ground he had gained. While many had trolled his buildings by blocking them in obsidian, now many more came in and TNT, others with pickaxes. He caught more and more people in the act of destroying his world, leading Creepers on goose chases to his skyscrapers. Others hacked into his vault and emptied it, leaving him a chest full of bones and rope.

He stopped getting on.

Let the people shape the world. He had enough problems with reality to let himself be dogged on Minecraft, as well.

* * *

“Hey, Tony.” Rhodey grinned up at him when Tony arrived in the training room. The man’s prostheses glowed slightly, even while he sat; they almost seemed normal after so many months seeing them. As if they’d always been there. Even though Tony knew better.

He smiled at the sight of his friend and sat on the workbench beside him. The Avengers compound was little more than a joke now, but they stayed in it from time to time for appearances. It was disheartening enough for the people of the world to see their number lowered so greatly. No need to get them worrying that the rest would quit, as well. “Hey,” he said. “Ready to go another round?”

His best friend grinned. “If you can keep up.”

They walked the bars, something Rhodey could do almost unassisted now. They tossed a ball back and forth, Tony carefully monitoring the bend of the prostheses whenever Rhodey had to shift his knees. They bucked a few times, then finally failed him when he tried to instinctively grab the ball with a side catch instead of moving in front of it. The added strain sent his leg falling beneath him, his body falling on its side to the floor. Rhodey winced as he sat back up, already holding up his hand as Tony made his way forward. Rhodey got himself up on his own, Tony trying not to look pensive or ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.

“So,” Rhodey said when he got his feet back beneath him. He leaned heavily on the handlebars beside him, but neither he nor Tony said anything about it. “How goes the gaming thing?”

For a long moment, all Rhodey got for his efforts was a clueless look. Then Tony pinged in. “Oh, no. Tell me you haven’t heard about the stupid Minecraft thing, too.”

Rhodey chuckled, and Tony’s hopes were dashed. “It was pretty amazing to see the media covering something on you that wasn’t about Iron Man or Stark Industries. I had to watch for the sheer wow factor.”

Tony groaned. “It’s just a game. Lots of people play Minecraft, and a fair amount even keep their servers open, like I did.”

Rhodey’s grin dimmed a bit. “Did?”

Tony shrugged. “I have too much work to do to continue playing around with that. There was a reason I went cold turkey off of Minecraft. It sucks up your free time worse than superheroing.”

“Uh-huh.” He may not have believed him, but at least Rhodey didn’t push. “All right. Wanna show me what you’ve been working on, then?”

Tony let himself be led away from the conversation on Minecraft. It was a bonus that Rhodey managed to walk nearly unassisted down to the labs and back up. He only fell twice, and both were against the wall.

It was progress.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Rhodey started jumping onto his server.

Tony hadn’t even gotten on to check; Friday had been the one to notify him that a known friend was playing around in his sandbox. He let her cajole him into joining him one day. He found the man playing with his cavern, digging out one of the sides and decorating it with ivy and dirt. Once it rained, the dirt would look much prettier. If it wasn’t totaled again in a few days. “What are you doing here?” he asked, barely waiting for Friday to set up voice chat before he started talking. “I’m positive you have better things to do.”

“It’s a team-building exercise,” Rhodey said, and there was that tone the man used when he had already done something and was trolling Tony for fun. “Vision and Parker are here, as well.”

“What?” He looked around, but he couldn’t see either of them. The place was, however, conspicuously lacking some of the usual sculptures and craters. “Why?”

“Because it’s a game and it’s fun,” he said, slowly, as if having to explain something obvious to an idiot. Tony scowled. He could almost hear Rhodey’s grin. “Besides. This is as close to spelunking as I can get at the moment. Let me have my fun.”

“Your manipulations are obvious and I will not feed them.” Still, Tony dropped the argument. It was clear Rhodey and the others had been working hard; chests were filled with blocks they’d dug up and spoils from the creatures they’d killed. The cavern’s spawn point, which had been found and released several times, was once more plugged shut. Tony spent far more hours than he should have helping to graft out the cavern once more. He soon learned which users were Vision and Peter, as they both came from wherever they’d been to start helping alongside them. Once they friended each other, they spent the afternoon playing and bickering and laughing, until finally Tony had to get off and get some actual work done. They promised to meet up two days from then, after Peter took a science test for school and Rhodey came back from a meeting with Ross. Vision, more engaged in the endeavor than Tony would have expected, wished them all well and signed off first. Tony went after him, afraid of being alone at the end.

Then he got to work, because he’d backlogged himself with his “team building.”

* * *

People still came to destroy his little Minecraft world, but the fervor from the media inevitably died down and, oddly enough, it almost seemed as if more and more people were coming to help build, or even just admire. A bunch of signs started cropping up, people thanking him for his work as Iron Man and, making his heart skip a beat, several of his employees leaving messages via their kids’ accounts. All of the turmoil he suffered through on the initial backlash, that was the outpouring of support he received in the next weeks following.

Tony walked along the edge of his cavern, newly dug out and blossoming with foliage after a few good rains. With the trees and flowers growing strong, Tony covered up a portion of the cavern’s roof and created the waterfall. It slipped past the first level of rock and splashed along the second before slipping between trees to the final level. Someone had already encrusted with bottom floor with sand and smooth sandstone, and there was little else for him to do except place small decorations and lure a few animals into the abode. Peter got on for a half hour and brought with him a plethora of glow stone to light the dim corners of the caves.

It looked nothing like the cave he’d known in Afghanistan, and he loved it.

Signs dotted the landscape when he came up for air, having said good-bye to Peter just minutes ago so the boy could finish his homework. He read them, even those he remembered from his last visit. 'Well wishes and happy building!’ 'Thank you for all that you do!’ 'My son is your biggest fan.’ 'I live in New York. The Avengers saved my life.’ 'We love you, Iron Man!’

He stopped beside one, his eyes widening as the script floated before him. 'I told you I’d be here if you needed me.’

He logged out.

* * *

As an experiment, Tony told Rhodey and the others to not get on the Minecraft server for a week.

A week would normally be enough time that they would be spending the next few hours on the game trying to fix what others had broken. It would mean the crueler messages, the ones left by those who wanted to hurt for the sake of hurting, would spam along with the messages of hope and good will. It would mean at least one gross caricature, or a middle finger tall enough to reach the sky, or giant letters telling Tony to stick inventive objects – and uninventive ones – into his rectum.

When they signed on, none of that was there.

Instead, there was a giant sculpture of the Avengers symbol – the one from his tower. And when he and the others made their way together to the feet of that monster, they found signs littered around it. Signs from random passersby, proclaiming their love for the Avengers. (The ones with hate and distrust must have been cleaned out here, as well.) But right in front of the things were a simple, uncomplicated row of messages. 'Hope you’re doing well.’ 'Dangle Ross by his underwear for me.’ 'Tell Vision I said hi.’

'Any time, in any world, Avengers defend. I’m sorry we fought.’

It wasn’t a perfect message. In fact, it was so imperfect it made Rhodey snarl. But it was a start. It was far more sincere than that bullshit letter.

And Tony supposed it helped that the vault was full to bursting again. Tony and the others spent their time rebuilding the vault’s diamond walls and setting trap after trap for the next person willing to get in. He and Peter made a game of it, creating a sort of pyramid. Vision quickly started outlining the building, and after a while, they all went back to talking and hanging out. Even Vision chuckled once, when Peter mentioned the likeliness of them being able to recreate their engineering in the real world. Tony and Vision began a complicated conjecture on what they’d have to do to work an upside-down pyramid into the sand.

Someone came up to them. It wasn’t too surprising; they’d had others walking around his world while they played, and at first, the newbie didn’t even register. He only remembered them when he heard one of their traps go off, and he turned his camera to see the avatar running away from a blast of arrows. The avatar didn’t make it. Tony and the others left the loot in case the person wished to return and joked about the success of their trap.

As a team-building exercise, maybe Rhodey had had the right idea. They concluded their time together at six. “When is the next time we’re all able to meet up?” Tony asked, a grin on his face as he tinkered with real work while he played. “We should meet up. At the tower? There are more games than just Minecraft, and we could eat. Real food, Peter, no offense to your aunt.”

Peter laughed. “Sounds good,” he said. “I’m free for most of the weekend? And Thursday night.”

“I am available whenever you need,” Vision said.

“Weekend it is,” Rhodey said. “We’ll make a day of it.”

By the time Tony signed off, he was feeling far more optimistic about the fate of the Avengers, and the world. He’d even left his own sign in response, left at the end of that horrible little row.

'May you never know how it feels to tell someone you care for you need them, only to have them offer their help after they’ve already abandoned you.’

He looked away from the computer screen and smiled down at what he was building in his own two hands. Apparently his mind had wandered, and he’d found himself rearranging several of the floors in the tower. The ones that had stood unoccupied for years. “Hey, Friday? Cancel my meetings for Sunday.”

“Already done, sir.”

He knew who his teammates were. And he was lucky to have them.


End file.
